Fun with Su yields something new

Often teaching gives me an opportunity to see some new and inspiring things. I spent last week with Su Bonfanti, helping her execute her plan for a book project. Su came prepared for our week, bringing a series of drawings that she and her sister had made years ago, a polymer plate she had ordered, and some text she wanted to work with. She started by cutting down the drawings and sorting the sheets.

Then some meticulous planning, type setting and ink mixing:

Printing on papers that were each unique yielded some fantastic and serendipitous moments. Like this bit of eggbeater/plate/text magic:

and this baseline miracle:

Su’s book will be an edition of five, each copy a unique object thanks to the original drawings. This spread for example:

will look like this in another copy of the book:

There is a lot to love in the details here, even just in the way the graphite and the ink overlap and interact.

I never print on surfaces like this, so working with Su gave me some food for thought. I can’t wait to see the book when it is bound (get to work, Su!) and I will post an update here when I get an image or two. I will leave you with this image from the week, a great moment where the product mirrored the process right down to the color of the ink. Thanks for an inspiring week, Su!

Thanks! I can answer that one because Su and I talked all about it. Su is planning to use a drumleaf structure, ideal because each spread will be made of one uninterrupted folded folio and the back sides of the sheets will not be visible.

Thanks! That gives me inspiration for a collaborative letterpress project I’m planning with friends who are new printers! They have small presses, so the sheets will be fairly small, the paper too stiff for a stab binding, and none of them are likely to take to something as complicated as a woven structure.